Our wild spending spree – By Emily Stewart (Business Insider) / April 21, 2024
Why high prices have failed to curb America’s appetite for shopping
We’ve all been there: staring down the price of a plane ticket, a new shirt, or a bag of chips and thinking angrily to ourselves, “Jesus Christ, this did not use to cost this much.” And then … we buy it anyway.
Inflation has made a lot of things infuriatingly expensive, and consumer confidence isn’t great. The economy is good on paper, but in the real world, a lot of people feel like they’re trapped in place. Yet many of those same people continue to spend their way through it. Retail sales came in higher than expected in March, up 0.7% month over month to $709.6 billion. February’s numbers were revised up, too. Consumers have proved themselves as the motor of the economy.
In short, America has become a nation of hate spenders.
“There is how consumers feel and what they’re doing,” Lydia Boussour, a senior economist at EY, said. “Consumers are not feeling great about inflation, but what the data is telling you is that even if they’re not feeling great, they’re still able to continue to spend.”
